Using aroma components to characterize majorcan varietal red wines and musts

Abstract

The volatile aroma composition of two Majorcan red varietal wines (Manto Negro and Callet), and the corresponding grape musts belonging to two different viticultural regions (zona Alta and zona Baja) were studied. Chemical data of nine and 16 compounds identified and quantified by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy in musts and wines, respectively, were treated by both Pattern recognition techniques, stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) and principal component analysis (PCA) in order to achieve a possible characterization. The greatest differences observed in musts by SDA were due to grape variety. Manto Negro presented higher concentration in cis-3-hexen-1-ol, while Callet was richer in trans-2-hexen-1-ol and benzyl alcohol. Discriminant analysis gave rise to good classification results in wines for both cultivar and geographic origin, being isoamyl acetate, γbutyrolactone, linalool, Ω-hexanol, and 2-phenyl acetate, cis-3-hexen-1-ol, isoamyl acetate, trans-2-hexen-1-ol, respectively, the selected variables in terms of characterization. Finally, the application of PCA to the former samples revealed a natural grouping of musts according to variety whereas in wines a good geographical association among the analysed samples was also achieved. © 1993 Academic Press Limited.